“You have nothing but nice people round you, Duchess.  Why should you want to read about them?  There is so much goodness in real life.  Do let us keep it out of our books.”

“That sounds a dreadful doctrine.  I see the parroco is about to take his departure.  Why does everybody leave so soon?”

She wandered away.

“The English are supposed to be bad linguists,” said Don Francesco.  “It is one of those curious international fallacies, like saying the French are a polite nation—­”

“Or that home-made marmalade tastes better than the stuff you buy in shops,” added Denis.  “I must help the Duchess to say good-bye to those people.  She likes to have some one handy on such occasions.  She needs an echo.  I am becoming quite a good echo.”

“You are,” said Keith, rather sharply.  “Quite a pretty echo.  And you ought to be a voice.  Follow my prescription, Denis.  The Cave of Mercury.”

Count Caloveglia remarked: 

“What a pity that Latin, as scholars’ language, for the definition and registration of ideas, was ever abandoned!  It has the incalculable advantage that the meanings of words are irrevocably fixed by authority.  New ones could be coined as occasion required.  Knowledge would gain by leaps and bounds.  There would be a cross-fertilization of cultures.  As things now stand, half the intellectuals of this world are writing about matters which, unbeknown to themselves, have already been treated by the other half.  One would think that Commerce, which has broken down geographical barriers, might have done the same to political ones.  Far from it!  In sharpening men’s lust for gold, it has demarcated our frontiers with a bitterness hitherto unknown.  The world of thought has not expanded; it has contracted and grown provincial.  Men have lost sight of distant horizons.  Nobody writes for humanity, for civilization; they write for their country, their sect; to amuse their friends or annoy their enemies.  Pliny or Linneus or Humboldt—­they sat on mountain-tops; they surveyed the landscape at their feet, and if some little valley lay shrouded in mist, the main outlines of the land yet lay clearly distended before them.  You will say that it is impossible, nowadays, to gather up the threads of learning as did these men; they are too multifarious, too divergent.  A greater mistake could not be imagined.  For there is a contrary tendency at work—­a tendency towards unification.  The threads converge.  Medieval minds knew many truths, hostile to one another.  All truths are now seen to be interdependent; never was synthesis easier of attainment.  Conflict of nationality and language hinders the movement.  Mankind at large is the loser.  The adoption of a universal scholars’ tongue would do much to remove the obstacle.  When these Southern races coalesce to form the great alliance which I foresee, when the Mediterranean basin is once more the centre of human activity as it deserves to be, some such plan will doubtless be adopted.”